What is the Cornwall Inscriptions Project ?

The Cornish Inscriptions Project (CIP) is a not for profit enterprise which is creating and publishing an archive of all memorials which record events and activities that commemorate the people of Cornwall.

Numerous plaques, burial ground headstones, foundation stones and formal monuments record the lives or actions of both the famous and successful as well as the ordinary person. By far the most numerous of these will be found in burial grounds, others will be located on war memorials; inscriptions are often inscribed on foundation stones of public buildings; special plaques may be erected to record an heroic or notable event or birth; there are prominent monuments to the rich or extraordinary such as the Bassett monument on Carn Brea or the Lander statue at the top of Lemon Street in Truro; churches and chapels as well as public buildings often have wall plaques. The majority of memorials will date from the past three hundred years but some will be very old, such as a few ancient inscribed memorials dating from the sixth/seventh centuries. Written records such as parish baptism, marriage and death registers, diaries, deeds, court and tax records, and numerous other “paper” documents are, in varying degrees of efficiency preserved by the County records Office and museums and transcribed, indexed and published by local historians and societies. However, records of the people who lived in Cornwall may also be found on stone, slate, marble, wood and metal, it is these that the project is recording and making available to researchers.

It is estimated that the names of over half a million people are recorded on memorials within the county of Cornwall. The great Cornish Diaspora does also mean that the activities and resting place of numerous Cornishmen and women may be found on memorials throughout the world.

The memorials that are being recorded have several attributes in common :

· In many instances the very existence of a memorial, let alone where and why it is located has not been formally recorded, or, if it has, tracing that record is an almost impossible task.

· Memorials were intended to provide a record of a name or event and mark a particular location, a permanent record for future generations. They are a unique source of facts and perceptions for genealogists and historians, some are wonderful examples of artistry and skill.

· Regretfully one attribute they all have in common is their lack of permanency. Many have been lost (and unrecorded) and those that are extant are at risk, suffering not just from natural deterioration but also under threat of loss due to both actual and accidental vandalism. The expression “written in stone” does not imply permanency.

· Memorials are of interest to a divergent range of people - many will be genealogists tracing their antecedents, others will be local historians looking for primary sources of information, some will be fulfilling a duty (“We will not forget them”), yet others may have a cultural or religious motive, a few may even have a commercial need. What ever the need the CIP archive will provide an invaluable resource.

So what is different about the CIP survey ?

The recording of information from memorials is notoriously fraught with pitfalls. The reading of old inscriptions, sometimes in tough field working conditions, and then producing a published version, even using the utmost diligence, can result in anomalies. Each transcriber adopts different protocols, sometimes just lists of names and dates, the dates may be put in a consistent order such as day, month, year rather than as it appears on the memorial, epitaphs excluded (they are time consuming and often tedious to record), spelling is sometimes “corrected”. Descriptions of a memorial rarely given. There may be two or more memorials on one plot, but the transcript recorded in such a way that it is not possible to differentiate between the memorials. Rarely is there mention of construction materials, orientation and condition. LOCATION MAPS are very unusual. Many memorials may no longer exist but details may be available in historic records, these will be included in the archive. A PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE of the memorials is an integral component of each CIP survey.

What will be the order of the survey ?

The final objective is to create and publish an archive of all Cornish memorials. This is a massive enterprise which requires an orderly approach. Consideration was given to following local government administrative area, whether District, town or Parish Councils. These would have been useful for organising and publishing the survey work in a methodological manner. However, such civil divisions of the County of Cornwall may not be as familiar to researchers as the ecclesiastical parishes. until 1837, when the government introduced civil recording of deaths, the vast majority of burial records and burial grounds were kept by and under the control of the individual Church of England parishes. Many who are researching their ancestors will be using the birth, marriage and death records of those parishes and be familiar with the parochial divisions of Cornwall and therefore an archive arranged in similar divisions will be user friendly. the use by CIP of Church of England divisions is for organisational purposes and ALL memorials located within a parish will be recorded, not just those on church property.

The boundaries of the modern parishes of the Diocese of Truro embrace all of Cornwall, including the Isles of Scilly, as well as two parishes that are in the County of Devon. There are 254 parishes. Each has been allocated a CIP reference number, starting with the Isles of Scilly which proudly carries register reference No. 1 and proceeding through the county to the Devon border where North Tamerton is honoured with Register reference 254. Bridgerule, which is in the Diocese of Exeter, has been included with Register reference 255, only because that parish was partly in Cornwall until 1844.

An important group of memorials recording the Cornish are located outside of Cornwall, this worldwide expatriate group has been allocated Register references beginning with 257.